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Category Archives for Exhibitions

1. Visit us and see our summer exhibitions (on view through August 4):

Sanford Biggers: Codex Jacob Lawrence: The Harriet Tubman Series
A new work by painter and VCU professor Ron Johnson in the Cool Spot Lounge

2. Come to a Happy Hour at the Anderson Gallery event (or two, or three, or eight!). Cash bar + free (amazing) programs, every Wednesday evening in June and July from 5-7. Find out what’s happening by visiting the events page on our website.

3. Submit your picture of a perfect summer cloud to our tumblr page (http://andersongallery.tumblr.com). All of the images will be gathered and printed on fabric. And, then, that fabric will be turned into a quilt at the final Happy Hour of the summer (July 31). Participate by submitting a pic or sewing a stitch and you can win the finished quilt!

4. Hang out in the Cool Spot Lounge. Kick off your shoes, read a magazine and enjoy the air conditioning. We’re open Tuesday-Sunday, noon-5 (noon-7 on Wednesdays); closed on Monday.

From January 18 to March 10, 2013, VCUarts Anderson Gallery will present Close Out: Retail Relics and Ephemera, an exhibition of objects and images culled from photographer Brian Ulrich’s vast personal archive of retail artifacts. It appears on the gallery’s first floor in conjunction with Copia—Retail,Thrift, and Dark Stores, 2001-11, an exhibition of Ulrich’s decade-long examination of the American consumer psyche organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Both exhibitions will open with a public reception on Friday evening, January 18, from 5 to 7 pm.

Although Ulrich included several items from his collection with his own photographs in his solo show at Julie Saul Gallery last spring, this presentation offers the first in-depth look at his collecting activities relative to his overall artistic practice. “It also extends the narrative arc of his Copia project by making clear that what he began to document in 2001 has a much longer history,” notes Gallery Director Ashley Kistler. A limited-edition artist book will accompany the exhibition.

The compulsion to collect physical things, Urich observes, grew out of the act of making photographs. “After spending countless hours trying to photograph a sign on a long- abandoned mall, I concluded that while the 8×10 camera really does bring about dramatic transformations, some subjects test its limits. It simply seemed to make more sense to move the sign itself,” he continues,“which set in motion a succinct attention to the artifact.” Pictured at left, an electric sign rescued from the now-demolished Belz Factory Outlet Mall outside of Dallas will illuminate the gallery’s facade.

Among other items salvaged by Ulrich and featured in Close Out are images from an extensive newspaper cache of negatives documenting the Great Prosperity, the post- World War II period of unprecedented prosperity for America’s middle class. “I consider these images a prequel to my own work,” he says. Ulrich reedits, reprints, and assembles this found material to underscore a historical narrative that reflects the era’s burgeoning investment and faith in a consumer-driven culture. Elsewhere in the exhibition, a large group of Polaroids of shoplifters and related material scavenged from the demolition of Richmond’s Cloverleaf Mall evokes one consequence as income disparities climbed to new levels during the 1980s and 90s.

Close Out also includes an installation of aluminum door pulls from long forgotten retailer Montgomery Ward; 1970s price label sheets from the former Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois; architect’s renderings and plans; and a myriad of other paper ephemera. A tape machine manufactured by Customusic, one of Muzak’s competitors, will provide the exhibition’s musical backdrop.

About the Artist

Born in 1971 in Northport, New York, Brian Ulrich received his BFA in photography from the University of Akron and his MFA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago.Since finishing his graduate studies in 2004, he has had solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Julie Saul Gallery, New York; and Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Galerie f5.6, Munich; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois;Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, among many other venues.

Ulrich’s photographs reside in such major museum collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. In 2007, he was named one of the year’s 30 Emerging Photographers by Photo District News, and was a critic’s pick by Richard Woodward in ARTnews. In 2009, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Ulrich currently lives in Richmond, where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography and Film at the VCU School of the Arts.

Photographer’s exploration of consumer culture opens January 18

RICHMOND – From January 18 to March 10, 2013, the Anderson Gallery of the VCU School of the Arts will present Copia—Retail,Thrift, and Dark Stores, 2001-11, the first major museum exhibition of photographer Brian Ulrich’s decade-long examination of the American consumer psyche. From the Latin word for “plenty,” the artist’s Copia series includes nearly 60 photographs that explore the economic, cultural, and political implications of commercialism and American consumer culture.“We are so pleased to feature this powerful body of work by Brian,who joined theVCUarts faculty last year and is quickly building an impressive international reputation,” says Gallery Director Ashley Kistler.

The exhibition was organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and made possible by the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Foundation. It will also travel to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh (September 29, 2013–January 5, 2014) and to Marquette University’s Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee next spring.

Works in the exhibition, curated by Tom Hinson, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s curator emeritus, are divided into three parts: Retail,Thrift, and Dark Stores. For the images included in the Retail phase (2001-06), Ulrich traveled extensively throughout the United States. He initially used a hand-held camera with the viewfinder at waist level, which allowed him to remain anonymous while docu- menting shoppers engrossed in navigating the abundance of goods found in vast enclosed malls and big-box stores. The second phase, Thrift (2005-08), focuses on thrift stores, the collecting places for discarded and unwanted consumer products, and its workers, as they attempt to bring order to the enormous amounts of donated, discarded, and unwanted consumer products.The concluding group, Dark Stores (2008-11), features images in which Ulrich explores the impact of the 2008 financial crisis with haunting architectural landscapes of abandoned buildings and empty parking lots that have become commonplace in towns across America.

“I had to see if people were indeed patriotic shopping in response to the events on September 11,” says Ulrich, referring to the beginning of his decade-long investigation. “Not only was it clear that this was the case, but standing in a big-box store or shopping mall, I could see the entire trajectory of the 20th-century economy and ideology playing out in the excess of goods and overwhelmed stares of the shoppers.Ten years later, I hope that these photographs serve as a marker with which we can learn about our behaviors, habits, comforts, and purpose.” [continued]

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Is This Place Great or What, which includes the entire Copia series, as well as a statement from Ulrich and an essay by Juliet B. Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, entitled Shopapalooza:The Boom and Bust of the Retail Economy. Co-published by the Aperture Foundation, the book is available from the Anderson Gallery for $40.00.

In conjunction with Copia, the Anderson Gallery has organized Close Out: Retail Relics and Ephemera, the first exhibition to present objects and images from Ulrich’s vast personal archive of retail artifacts. This presentation provides a wider historical context for the artist’s own photographs and is accompanied by a limited-edition artist book. Both exhibitions will open with a public reception on Friday evening, January 18, from 5 to 7 pm.

About the Artist

Born in 1971 in Northport, New York, Brian Ulrich received his BFA in photography from the University of Akron and his MFA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago. Since finishing his graduate studies in 2004, he has had solo exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Julie Saul Gallery, New York; and Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Galerie f5.6, Munich; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois;Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, among many other venues.

Ulrich’s photographs portraying contemporary consumer culture reside in such major museum collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. In 2007, he was named one of the year’s 30 Emerging Photographers by Photo District News and a critic’s pick by Richard Woodward in ARTnews. In 2009, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. His work has been recently featured in the New York Times Magazine; Orion Magazine; Vice Magazine; Mother Jones; Chicago Tribune; Artforum; Harper’s Magazine; Leica World; Yvi Magazine, and as a frequent contributor to the magazine Adbusters. Ulrich currently lives in Richmond, where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography and Film at the VCU School of the Arts.

RICHMOND, VA- Works by ten sculptors—both veterans and relative newcomers to the international art scene—will be featured in the Anderson Gallery’s winter exhibition, you, your sun and shadow. The exhibition is curated by Michael Jones McKean, a professor in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media, and organized by the Anderson Gallery at the VCU School of the Arts. “This project offers a singular opportunity to explore a significant aspect of contemporary sculpture from the personal perspective of an artist who is himself highly regarded as an innovator in the field,” says Director Ashley Kistler. The public is invited to attend an opening reception on Friday, January 20, from 6 until 8 p.m. Also free and open to the public, McKean will give a gallery talk on Wednesday, January 25, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

The investigation of materiality—often paired with a hypersensitive regard for everyday objects—is a central concern of each artist in the show, which includes highly technical approaches as well as the most basic means of delineating space and making marks. In the latter camp, Ian Pedigo handles discarded materials with a directness that preserves their humble character, while coaxing from them visual subtleties that map space in simple but evocative ways. Using steel wool as a painterly tool, Daniel Turner works on site to make wall rubbings whose discreet, seemingly accidental presence belies their intentionality.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, the alchemical transformation of materials again reminds us that appearances can be deceiving. The rarefied ingredients that Dario Robleto assembles to create his work are as important as the final outcome. Often resembling castoff objects, artifacts, or keepsakes, his painstakingly crafted sculptures are symbolically loaded by virtue of their material composition. Through the millennia-old technique of casting, Hany Armanious mines the arcane power, formal possibilities, and conceptual implications of meticulously reproducing everyday objects, elevating both their status in the world and their presence in our minds. Similarly, two works by Tony Matelli, characterized by random marks, grimy smudges, and dusty surfaces, appear to be nothing more than neglected mirrors, while his life-sized figure, floating just inches above the floor in a fugue-like state, offers a hyper-real encounter that reaffirms the sculptor’s sleight of hand.
Other artists address materiality in terms of their selection, arrangement, and display of preexisting objects. Haim Steinbach, an early and especially influential proponent of this approach, is represented by two of his shelf works. In his alter-like assemblages, Rashid Johnson arranges culturally resonant objects to create a personal vocabulary of symbols and references. Sarah Sze, well known for expansive installations engineered with the most quotidian items, goes one step further, casting in plaster all the recyclable containers from a month of lunches and snacks. These nearly 400 simple white forms infiltrate the Anderson Gallery’s work space, their ghostly presence blurring the edge between art and life.

Tatiana Trouvé’s precisely scaled architectural installation reinforces the quiet, sometimes pensive tone that runs through much of the exhibition, as well as the importance of the viewer’s participation in deciphering a narrative. Viewed from opposing sides through large panes of greenish glass, an otherwise inaccessible room contains a mysterious assortment of found and made objects, gestural marks, small doors, and private spaces. Pam Lins also plays with perspective and shifting points of view in her endlessly inventive iterations of the plywood pedestal, each of which changes in appearance, revealing paradoxical characteristics, as the viewer moves around the sculpture.

The exhibition will continue through Sunday, March 11. The Anderson Gallery is located at 907½ West Franklin Street, on VCU’s Monroe Park campus. It is open to the public Tuesday through Friday 10 am-5 pm, and Saturday and Sunday noon-5 pm, and closed on Sunday.

We are in the midst of installation time over here at the Anderson Gallery. Getting ready for our fall exhibition– Environment and Object, Recent African Art. Organized by the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, the exhibition features work by sixteen contemporary African artists. Currently, we’re in the process of installing three dazzling wall hangings by internationally celebrated artist El Anatsui. He’ll be at VCU giving the 2011 Windmueller lecture on Monday, September 19 at the Grace Street Theatre. The lecture’s format will be a conversation between Anatsui and Babatunde Lawal, professor of Art History at VCU (and one of the nicest and most intelligent men you’ll ever meet).

The show will tackle some tough issues– like the impact of urbanization and ecological devastation– and the work on view is absolutely stunning. There are great teaser images on our website: http://arts.vcu.edu/andersongallery/exhibits/future-exhibitions/

Stop by the opening reception; it’ll be here at the Gallery on Friday, September 9 from 5-8 pm.

And, don’t miss the panel discussion on September 8 at the Grace Street Theater, 934 W Grace. Two featured artists, Viye Diba from Senegal and Bright Ugochukwu Eke, as well as the exhibition co-curators and Dr. Lawal will all be offering up their thoughts and insights into the show and the themes that it addresses. See you there!!